The mystery about the unidentified man who had dropped the cash onto the floor of the restaurant -- and then walked out not realizing he'd dropped it -- was solved Friday when he came forward.

And he recovered his cash, with gratitude to the employee who'd found it.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the man said.

The man's name is Victor Long, an Atlanta attorney who practices civil rights law. Long said Friday he thought he would never be able to figure out where he'd lost the money, and would never see it again.

But Friday afternoon he was able to walk into the Chick-fil-A in downtown Decatur to meet the honest, young employee, Jacob King. King immediately placed the money back into Long's hands, with a smile.

Last week, on April 1, Long was at a table at the restaurant eating breakfast, and the restaurant's security camera shows the cash falling to the floor.

It was money for Long's business, and it was a large part of the $1,200 bank deposit he was about to make.

It wasn't until Long arrived at the bank when he realized that the cash part of the deposit, hundreds of dollars, was missing.

The restaurant's video shows the cash sitting on the floor as Long got up to leave. The video shows the cash remaining there untouched in the busy restaurant for 14 minutes, until the Chick-fil-A employee, Jacob King, spotted it.

"I just looked down and I saw a little green square thing on the floor," King said. "I picked it up, and I was a little worried that somebody was missing that much money."

King brought the money up front to the manager. The restaurant's operator, John Crays, tried relentlessly to identify and find the man who'd dropped it, showing customers a photo of him taken from the video, hoping someone would know him.

Long never realized anyone was looking for him.

"I had gone to so many places that day, I didn't even think about backtracking, because I figured anybody who found the money, the way people need things now, it probably never was going to come back."

Long is a man of faith. He teaches a Sunday School class at Beulah Baptist Church on Griffin St. He speaks of how thankful he is that he can continue to work. He speaks of how he prayed about his frustrating loss -- losing so much of the money he needed to deposit into his business's account.

He said he was at peace with the loss, ready to work even harder to earn replacement funds.

"I hoped that whoever got the money would need it. And I was satisfied with that. And I thought that if someone who found it needed it, it would be a blessing to me."

On Thursday night, 11Alive News aired the restaurant's video.

"I saw the video at 11:00 last night on your station," Long said, "and then people started calling me."

Seeing the video is how he found out where he'd lost the money, and that's when he found out, incredibly, that the restaurant still had it for him.

He contacted the restaurant Friday morning, and went there Friday afternoon to meet King and to thank him, personally.

"That shows the goodness in him as well as the goodness in this establishment," Long said, "that they have here good people. Good honest people who are willing to work and to serve. And I can't imagine what Chick-fil-A had to go through to find me, and they made a tremendous effort to find me and to make sure I got the money back."

"You only really have two ways to go about things," King said, "there's the right way and there's every other way. And that's pretty much all there is to it."

Victor Long and Jacob King chatted for several minutes, and Long thanked King again as he handed him a sealed envelope. And Long told King that he and his wife wanted King and his mother to be their guests at church and Sunday dinner. They shook hands again.

Then Long got in line, smiling and chatting with the employees behind the counter, ordering a late lunch at his favorite restaurant.